The Charismatic Voice - Faithfully

 

It's a little Journey, come on.

While this is one of my favorite Journey songs (perhaps #2), I really hate the music video. It's part of a genre of music videos from the late 80s and early 90s about the dreariness of touring which was so repetitive as to become monotonous. Sitting on the tour bus, getting on and off of planes, occasional black and white footage, roadies hauling equipment - oh being a rock star is drudgery - isn't living the dream a nightmare?

I haven't been able to define the genre sufficiently because I never gave it a name and didn't collect enough examples. Motley Crue "Home Sweet Home" and Bon Jovi "Wanted Dead or Alive" both flirt with the genre but don't ultimately succumb to it. The genre-defining examples I had were Journey "Faithfully" and Genesis "Throwing It All Away." I think there are a million examples out there but I needed to do more research and never got around to it.

Oh, and I think my thoughts are independent here but just in case, the Beyond Yacht Rock Podcast has an episode that defines the genre "This Was Supposed to be Fun" which is songs about the difficulties of touring. But they're talking about a type of song and I was thinking of a type of music video.

Youtube's Thumbnail

 

The thumbnail for "The Hunt for Red October" on youtube is blue. Who are the ad wizards who came up with that one?

Football on Film

 

Lately I've been watching old football highlights on youtube. There's this whole genre where they'll take a particular game from the 80s or 90s or what-have-you and condense it into 15-20 minutes of the deciding moments. It's great nostalgia as well as an interesting barometer to see how much has changed. A word to regular football viewers: football in the 1980s doesn't even appear to be the same sport as football now - and that's not a complement to the current iteration.

So anyways, posting football highlights here would be futile but here is an extremely well made "Football on Film" edit. That clips with no context can still affect the viewer emotionally is a very strange phenomenon.

Will Vinton's Claymation Christmas Celebration

 

I saw "Claymation Christmas Celebration" once, when it aired for the first time in 1987, and not a single time since then until today. Now I can't figure out why this isn't a Christmas classic that gets aired year after year throughout the generations.

It's colorful, it's whimsical, it's got great music. It's smart without the whiff of being "educational" - it doesn't talk down to its audience. It's playful without being disrespectful - either to the holiday or the traditions. It's the kind of entertainment that kids and adults can enjoy, pretty much, equally. And they were even able to get the California Raisins on to add some celebrity shine (yes, the California Raisins were already stars at this point and came on for a guest spot.)

Special shout-out to the recurring "What is wassail?" segments which were my favorite part, as a kid; and also to the "Carol of the Bells" segment, which is just perfectly executed goofiness.

The special isn't available in its entirety on youtube; you can get see it on archive.org.

And I didn't know how much of a legend Will Vinton was. You can see his work in the music video for "Moonwalker," "Return to Oz," "Captain EO" and invented The Noid and The California Raisins. That's amazing. He died in 2018.

The Late Show Traditions

The official David Letterman channel has released a compilation of the various Late Show Christmas traditions in one handy video. Watch it and pretend it's a new episode, I guess. Darlene Love is omitted but there's a separate compilation just for that.

Today's Mood in Gif Form